


Interlude

by Lila17



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Afterlife, Gen, Ghost Tony, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Canon, Post-Endgame, does it need to be tagged major character death if the guy’s already dead?, ghost - Freeform, i’ll think of more tags later, references to tony/pepper
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:34:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23437792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lila17/pseuds/Lila17
Summary: A little after his death, Tony wakes up...somewhere. He's not totally sure what's happening right now.
Kudos: 13





	1. interlude

**_interlude_ **

Before anything else, there is- sensation.

Noises, sounds, colors. Voices skim across his skin like spirals before dissolving into the color blue, light separates into wavelengths before his eyes. He twists sideways, feels metal under his fingertips and tastes time in his mouth. 

He would say that it was terrible or confusing or exhilarating if he was in any position to make judgements, but he’s not. For everything that he’s experiencing, he feels strangely detached from it all; it’s happening. That’s it. The idea to question it or form an opinion on it doesn’t even enter his head, like most things don’t.

He just is, and this is too.

It’s impossible to tell how long it goes on for. Maybe it’s not even something he  _ can _ know or tell; he doesn’t think this is something that words can describe. And in any case, he doesn’t care to know anyway.

At some point, the sensations change. They begin to cross and intersect, and turn from a tornado of puzzle pieces to- albeit a storm, but one of understandable constructions. He idly notes this, but doesn’t act on it.

A floor unfolds beneath his feet before splintering into a tree that rings like a gong-

An amorphous metal shape melts as it moves, and he tastes something sweet in the back of his throat as it shatters-

A sharp purple vine stretches out in all directions before a flower on its underside blooms wide and swallows the entire plant whole-

The images blur and follow and shift and change, and don’t stop. However, they do slow. The pace becomes languid and he starts to think properly for the first time. He doesn’t know if the scenes start to make more sense from that point on, or if he is simply projecting sense onto them; he moves around inside them, though whether it can really be called moving when time and space never cease changing isn’t clear.

There are stepping stones. He comes to realize that his body is separate from his surroundings, and that each body part can be moved separately of each other. As well, he begins to recognize that some of the new scenes are more familiar to him than others.

  
  
  


An underground room with scattered pieces of tech-

A room full of people, all wearing strange clothes and slouching against their chairs as if they’re tired-

An outdoor space full of rubble with a strange cast to the sunlight, dust on his hands-

A baby crying inside a room at night-

A dying man lying on the ground in front of him inside a cave-

A red-headed woman waiting for him outside of an airplane-

A house in the forest-

A dark ship floating in space-

Down on one knee on a battlefield, talking to someone, a thick weight on his hand and he’s raising it up-

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


-They’re memories. He has memories. The idea settles into his mind as if it’s meant to be there, and he adjusts to it with as much quiet unsurprise as he has to everything else; this is what it is. 

He has memories.

Each new memory is a novelty, yet he can’t exactly say that they’re new information. He knows what’s happening in every scene- he just, never quite thinks of them on his own before they happen.

He’s floating in space. Something massive explodes in front of him and that’s somehow good, but it doesn’t matter because he can’t breathe.

He’s talking in front of a crowded room of people, and everything feels blurry and strange so he might be drunk.

He’s leaning against a workbench, he’s tired and it’s late at night but he needs to finish building something.

He’s standing inside a house, with a slowly-moving hologram floating in front of him. It means something to him and he sits down hard.

He’s standing at a party, someone comes up and wants to debrief him on something. They set an appointment.

He’s using a wristwatch to pay for a box of strawberries at the side of a road.

He’s arguing with a man all in blue.

He’s encased in some kind of metal suit and- and that one’s a theme. He’s inside a metal suit in a lot of memories.

He watches them ( _feels them_ ) one after another, absorbing them and trying to fit them all together. There are certain people who repeat over and over and he’s pretty sure there’s an order to all these events, but he doesn’t know what it is. He doesn’t know the names of most of the people either.

There’s the woman with the red hair, for one. A man wearing armor, too, and a man with a helmet and a shield. A teenager in a red and blue suit. An enormous, humanoid green monster, as well as a mild-mannered scientist with glasses, who he’d thought had been completely different people until a memory had shown one turning into the other. A guy with an eyepatch, a disembodied British voice, a man in a suit like his. A young girl of varying age.

He doesn’t really know their names because even though his own movements and actions sometimes carry over in the memories, his thoughts and speech don’t. He usually has a vague idea of what he was saying, at least (enough to understand the scene), but it’s not exactly great with small details like names. Plus, he gets the feeling that he didn’t call people by their actual names very much anyway- which leaves a lot of guesswork and waiting until someone else says a person’s name.

He just goes along with it, and slowly pieces together what appears to be the story of his life.

_ An invasion? He was on a team of people- something happened, they split. But something else happened too, after that, and a lot of people died. He got kidnapped at some point but he can’t completely tell when. The red-haired woman is important, she’s there through mostly everything, and there’s a lot of battles and- _

He thinks he’s getting the hang of it, and it’s starting to all make sense. He’s somewhat sure he knows who he is. He’s also starting to suspect exactly what happened that got him  _ here_, but he’s not sure yet on that so he’s reserving judgement.

So, everything’s going along smoothly. The only problem though is that some of the scenes don’t- fit. They have the right people, sure, and sometimes the right places, but they don’t feel familiar. He tries, but he doesn’t think he remembers them happening. Scenes like that are somewhat rare but they still happen, and he’s not sure what to make of them.

And, also- it takes him some time to realize it, but no one ever looks at him or talks to him in those scenes. They carry on with whatever they’re doing as if he’s not there. Maybe they’re operating off the same playback principle as the memories with showing former events, except that these are ones that he wasn’t originally in the room for.

He’s not sure if that explanation totally makes sense. But there’s nothing he can do about it either way, so he just lets those scenes wash over him like everything else. Because the pieces are all clicking together, filling the gaps in his memory, and at some undefinable point in time he arrives at two realizations:

One, his name is Tony Stark. And two, he’s pretty sure he’s dead.


	2. One

**_One_ **

So, he’s got his whole life story filed away now. He was born to two parents of indeterminate quality, one of whom was obsessed with the blond patriotic guy, and he discovered technology early on and was good at it. He grew up, went to school, partied, graduated, his parents died, he took control of the company and then he made weapons for a while. Then he got kidnapped and subsequently changed his entire life around, and made the metal suit and became a hero. The  _ only _ super hero, apparently, for a couple years.

Then there was an invasion on New York, and he met all those other people. Two spies, a god, Mr. Blond & Patriotic, the green guy. They became a team, did a lot of fighting together, defeated the aliens, and mutually decided to keep doing that sort of thing. They did a lot more fighting and saving for a few years- then at some point later he partially created a homicidal robot, they defeated it, and then there was legislation against the team and they argued. The team split, it turned out that Blond Patriotic had known his parents had been murdered and not told him, and the team split even more. And then. Then years after that, aliens showed up and it turned out that there was a man trying to kill half the universe. So he went into space, met some people; they fought the man, they lost, half the universe died, they couldn’t reverse it, five years passed, he had a kid and a family and then he invented time travel and the team re-formed and the dead people returned and they fought the guy again and Tony sacrificed himself so that they could win.

And now he’s here. Presumably, this is death.

He’s not really sure if what’s happening now is because of the Stones, or just what always happens to people after they die, or some kind of weird purgatory that happens to people who have done both a lot of good things and a lot of bad things. For whatever reason, his afterlife seems dead set on replaying a Greatest Hits album of his entire life, except that every single moment possible counts as a greatest hit.

Currently, he’s in a memory where he’s in a giant floating ship, talking to some of the team members a little before the alien invasion of New York. Before this was a memory of building the arc reactor for the first time, and before that a memory of his daughter’s second birthday.

He walks across the room, his body moving automatically to match his original actions. Bruce Banner (whose name he now knows because of the red-headed spy helpfully saying it in an earlier memory) is talking about being exposed and not having a suit, and Tony is lightly arguing with him about it.

Their conversation ends and as Tony walks away, the colors melt and re-form into a different lab. Across that lab with his back to Tony is the weird Banner-Hulk combination that happened between the two Thanos showdowns. Two memories in a row with Banner, he notes with mild interest.

Except this isn’t a memory, he realizes. He doesn’t recognize the lab, for one, and for another Banner is just standing there quietly working on something. He’s pretty sure that if this was a memory of a time where Tony had been there for real, one of them would have done or said something by now.

The fact that this is one of the strange non-memory scenes piques his interest. He’s still curious about them, not totally satisfied with his own explanation, so he tries to walk around to Banner’s side to see what he’s working on. This has been a pretty dull scene so far, so he’s not sure why it was singled out.

When he moves around in his own memories he’s really just matching how his original self was moving, which gives it a sort of effortlessness- he somehow just knows what to do and where, like he’s following a script he doesn’t have to read. A scene like this that he originally wasn’t in at all, however, shouldn’t  _ have _ a script and so he should theoretically be able to go wherever he wants.

He takes the first step and immediately it’s like walking through water. He stops in place and just moves his hands in front of him for a second- it feels like he’s moving both at normal speed but also at a much slower rate, which gives it all a strange surreal quality. Maybe it’s just because he hasn’t made actual decisions on his movement for a while now, and he’s a little out of practice?

He grits his teeth, and he’d shake his head too if that didn’t seem like too much effort. He keeps moving forward, aware that this scene may dissolve soon, and then stumbles while walking around one of the tables. He puts his hand out toward the table on instinct despite how useless that should be, and he’s- he’s not exactly sure what he expected to happen. For his hand to bounce off, go straight through?

Instead, as it gets closer it seems to move slower and faster at once, before suddenly breaking through some invisible barrier and shooting forward to  _ slam  _ into an object on the table. And the object yields under his hand just like it should, and falls off the table.

For half a second he feels like he catches Bruce Banner’s head starting to turn toward the noise, before the floor falls out from under him and he’s thrown into another memory.

Figures. 

The results of what he just did make no sense, since he shouldn’t be able to change what is essentially a recording of a past event like that. He’ll just have to wait for another scene like that to come along to test it again.

He goes through many more memories in quick succession (or what feels like ‘quick succession’ at least). And even though they’re as interesting to recall and review as usual, he can’t help but feel slightly impatient.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_ “Must have just set it down wrong earlier…” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comment plz


	3. Two

**_Two_ **

He’s starting to branch into philosophy, which is maybe a good sign.

Actually, he has no idea what can be defined as a “good sign” when you’re in the afterlife. But replaying all these memories in the context of the fact that he’s dead has, undeniably, made him start thinking about the end result of his life and his place in the universe and all that junk.

Legacy. When he was in that cave talking with Yinsen all those years ago, seeing what his weapons were used for for the first time, that had been the overriding question- what he wanted his legacy to be. Looking over his entire life now, he hopes that the legacy he eventually created is one that would have made that old version of him proud.

He also still doesn’t have any answers for what exactly the point of all this reviewing is. It’s not terrible, he has to say- definitely more pleasant than hell and arguably better even than eternal oblivion. He can think of a lot of afterlives worse than just sitting here and replaying his life over and over; at least he still gets to see everyone, so that’s pretty alright.

Except for memories of Morgan. Those do actually kind of hurt sometimes. And to a certain degree so do the memories with Peter, because while he is curious about what all the other adults have been doing since his death, there’s nothing specific with them that he wanted to be around for. It’s not like how he’s going to miss all of Morgan’s future birthdays. It’s not like how he’s never going to know which college Peter will go to.

His version of the afterlife is unfairly close to bullshit in that aspect. You’re supposed to miss the dead person, the dead person isn’t supposed to be able to miss you  _ back _ . And arguably he’s lost more people than anyone else who’s still alive, but he doesn’t get to throw touchy-feely funerals for any of  _ them. _

Unfair.

He’s in a memory with Morgan right now too, one where he’s trying to explain to her how holograms work. He’d been working on something when she’d wiggled into his lap, little fingers snatching at the images and making them move erratically. It’s a cute memory, domestic fun with a splash of genius billionaire tech.

And then the memory after that is also about Morgan. And the one after that too. And the one after that. And statistically he knows it has to happen sometime, but it’s bullshit that it’s happening right  _ now _ when he was just thinking about it.

He finally steps out of a memory of Morgan learning to walk, and into a darkened room. It’s a little familiar, and- ah. He spots Morgan again, sleeping in her bed a little distance away from him. Another one. She looks about as big as he’s ever seen her; this must have taken place pretty soon before the time travel heist.

He’s not really sure what’s happening in this memory. He’s standing just inside the doorway- maybe he was working late and walked by, and he ended up just watching her sleep while thinking about his life or something.

Except before his eyes, she starts to shift and roll around. It takes a moment to click as she moves around some more and her eyes snap open, and she sits up with a small sound- she had a nightmare.

He takes a step toward her and instantly feels that kind of not-used-to-moving vertigo. What, is this one of those scenes? He still doesn’t really know how these work but- okay, you know what? Screw it. He wanted to test out touching objects again anyway, and he’s not just going to stand here if she had a nightmare. His mind casts around for anything he can give her to calm her down, since it’s not like he can just put a disembodied hand on her shoulder.

There’s a stuffed animal that she sleeps with sometimes but he doesn’t see it here. She’s rubbing her face like she’s upset, so he steps out of her room to try to find it.

Moving around still feels strange, but easier than last time. He runs down the hallway, searching, and finally spots it on a shelf just outside one of the bathrooms. Why’s it there? He stops in front of it and takes a deep breath before reaching for it with both hands. 

Just like last time, it’s almost as if he hits turbulence in the air before he touches it, and he has to shove through that in order to grab it- but he manages it anyway.

It’s almost like a pressure, he thinks as he’s lugging the stuffed animal (which suddenly feels insanely heavy) back to her room. Trying to hold the object and carry it down the hallway feels like there’s constantly something trying to push him back- not in any particular direction, even, just almost in every direction possible to stop moving and put it down.

Once he makes it back to her room he all but shoves it into her hands, and instantly all the pressure disappears at once. He nearly sighs as she clutches at the animal gratefully. Automatically he opens his mouth to say something the way he normally would, and-

For a second he’s both startled to hear his voice at  _ all, _ since he almost didn’t expect that, as well as that it comes out as a nearly inaudible whisper despite the fact that he feels like he was going for normal volume. 

“Sweetheart, go find your mother _. _ ”

Morgan’s head jerks up but she doesn’t seem to see him, her eyes moving around like there’s nothing there. She starts to get up, her head tilted to the side, but at that moment all the shadows in her room simultaneously expand and swallow the scene whole. 

Show’s over. Hopefully Morgan’s okay, whenever it was that that took place. The next couple memories are all Avengers stuff, and as he sinks back into his usual routine he ponders what exactly these non-memory scenes are.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_ “Hey. Something strange happened last night with Morgan.” _

_ “Like what?” _

_ “She has- nightmares sometimes. And she had one last night and came into my room afterwards, but she was holding a stuffed animal when she did. Earlier yesterday, that stuffed animal got dirty so I washed it and put it on a shelf to dry. Morgan shouldn’t have been able to reach it.” _

_ “...okay yeah, that’s weird. Did she say how she got it?” _

_ “That’s the strange part. I asked, and apparently someone gave it to her.” _

_ “Who?” _

_ “...She said it was Tony.” _


	4. Three

**_Three_ **

Okay so, Tony has this crazy idea.

He can’t really prove it, but the fact of the matter is that his original explanation for the non-memory scenes doesn’t make any sense at all. No matter how difficult it is to interact with objects or speak while he’s in them, if they were really past events then he wouldn’t be able to do either of those things, period.

He has about two explanations for what they actually are: one, that they’re some kind of construction of his own mind, like the weird afterlife version of a dream (which he really can’t rule out, considering the massive extended LSD trip that was his first experience in the afterlife).

And then the second, which is that- based on how everyone and everything seems very similar to how things were just before he died- these scenes are real, actual events happening in the living world. Which as an idea is so utterly game-changing that he refuses to take a single step in that direction without proof.

He’s been trying to recall all of the non-memory scenes he’s ever been in, trying to remember if there was ever an indication of a date somewhere. Certainly, all the people he’s seen in them match up very closely to the most recent versions of them that he saw before he died- and he’s pretty sure he’s never seen Natasha in one, either. Which would make sense if it’s not a construction, since she’s dead too.

(Yay. Dead buddies)

(He wonders what kind of afterlife  _ she’s _ having.)

But still, people looking mostly how they should and a certain person missing isn’t proof. Tony’s brain is powerful enough to do things like get him out of a cave in Afghanistan and invent time travel- he wouldn’t put it past it to be able to fabricate entire consistent dream sequences that match up with what he consciously knows. He needs to test it out.

Plus, there  _ are  _ some unexplained aspects of the scenes. Even though Natasha’s absence could be taken as evidence, he’s also never seen Steve appear either and he has no explanation for  _ that_. The most ready conclusion is that Steve died too, except that Tony literally took out Thanos’ entire army as he died. He doesn’t think that even Steve could find a way get himself killed with no enemy to fight.

He spends the time waiting for another non-memory scene to show up by trying to see if he can stall and make memories stretch for longer. He’s noticed that sometimes when he’s really caught up in outside thoughts, the memory he’s in will slow down or even come to a halt for a brief time until he finishes thinking. There’s no reason why time should slow down for him if the scenes are just him snooping in on an actual real-life place, but it does show that he can assert some amount of control on his surroundings. Maybe he can force it to let him stay in a certain scene for longer.

It takes a lot of work, but eventually he’s pretty sure that he can force a memory to go on longer than usual by aggressively thinking about what should happen next after every event. Time somewhat isn’t real in the afterlife, but a lot of times in memories there’ll be clocks he can look at. Shockingly, clocks work correctly everywhere.

But still, as the memories pass by he starts to get antsy. Has the memory scene to not-memory scene ratio always been this steep? He’s usually never had to wait when he’s wanted to test out a theory, making him impatient as hell, so when something other than a memory finally appears (and it’s easy to tell, now that he’s looking for it; something imperceptibly different in the atmosphere of the scene, like there’s more finality to anything he does), he starts moving instantly.

This scene is set in the apartment of this weird old guy that Tony has seen in scenes before. Exactly who he is is a whole other mystery about these scenes that he hasn’t solved, separate from the why-haven’t-I-seen-Steve mystery.

In any case, the guy  _ thankfully  _ has a computer, even if it’s a slightly dinky old one. The moment that the old man leaves the room he dives for it, intent on searching for the date.

Great, there’s a password. Who taught him how to do that?

He starts digging through all the papers and objects on the desk the computer is on, trying to find if he wrote it down anywhere. It’s slow going, since despite the fact that some of them literally just pieces of paper, trying to pick up two or three objects at once is exponentially harder than one. There’s a notebook with some different things written or drawn in pencil inside it, and he pauses for a second while flipping through it. He feels like he recognizes the handwriting, but he’s not sure from where.

After a second, he shakes himself and keeps going. He’s trying hard to keep himself here but he could honestly still disappear at any moment, and the guy could be coming back soon as well. He’s not actually sure what he’d do if the guy did come in- fight him for control of the computer?

Who would win in a fight between a dead Tony Stark and an old guy? Philosophical questions.

Honestly, if he’s actually a ghost then he’s going to freak this guy out by moving all his stuff around  _ regardless _ of if he actually catches Tony in the act or not, so frankly, at the moment he doesn’t really care.

But finally, at the absolute bottom of a neat stack of papers, he finds it- thank god for people who physically write down their passwords. All of the passwords are very basic and very dumb, and he automatically goes to type it in with both hands like usual until- his hands shove through the barrier and end up pressing basically every single key at once.

...okay. So things like typing require fine ghost dexterity. Makes sense.

He ends up typing with his index finger like a first grader, and finally makes it online. He takes a deep breath, slightly jittery, and simply searches “today’s date”- the answer comes up immediately.

  
  
  


_ Friday, January 19, 2024. _

  
  
  


He doesn’t move for a few seconds, processing it. As far as dates go, it’s- plausibly correct. The day that he died was in June of 2023, so it would make sense for it to be January 2024 now. Or at least, it wouldn’t  _ not  _ make sense.

It’s plausible.

He had no idea how long the initial LSD trip and all the other memories were, not at any point during it all. But if this date is correct, it would mean that he’s been dead for nearly eight months.

And Tony’s still standing, because it’s not worth it to try to move a whole chair just to sit down, but he still takes a long, slow breath to steady himself. Eight months isn’t- it’s not  _ long, _ or at least it shouldn’t be, not in the grand scheme of things. But suddenly, it feels like an eternity. He’s just been,  _ not there  _ for eight whole months. An absence. Tony Stark failing to reappear.

(This is bullshit. He shouldn’t be able to miss the living people  _ back._)

He starts typing again, trying to search for news articles. He feels uncomfortably like he’s already jumped to accept the idea that this is all real, but he needs proof. News articles about himself, about the Avengers, about scientific advancements or politics, anything too complicated and internally consistent for him to believe that it’s all a dream.

It turns out that even in death ( _especially _ in death), Tony Stark is famous enough to monopolize a lot of the Avengers news coverage not specifically about the return of everyone who disappeared. Surprisingly, he’s not particularly enthused to read a thousand fervent obituaries about himself all trying to make a fundamental truth or moral out of his life, so he ends up mostly skipping those. There’s a  _ lot _ of things, now that he thinks about it, that weren’t ever designed for the dead person to still be around to experience.

Automatically, he still  _ wants _ to try to read about the other Avengers and people first, just to see what this dream and/or reality has come up with for them. But logically, he knows that news about the people he knows would be easier to convincingly construct. So instead, he bypasses the couple of relevant articles that he finds and saves them for later, and starts wading into the scientific articles instead. Scientific fields are so broad and technical, involving so many interlocking concepts and people, that if he’s ever going to find proof that this all isn’t real then he knows he’ll find it there.

He starts by searching for inconsistencies in the news coverage of a recent advancement in quantum physics, trying to find any little contradictions or signs of a dream starting to break down. He finds...none. He goes faster and faster, but everything he sees stays resolutely realistic and plausible.

The scientists make sense, the discoveries make sense, even the locations make sense. He thinks- no,  _ knows_\- that even in the vast body of information he’s already consumed, everything he’s read matches up with each other. As a last resort, he even goes back and starts reading celebrity gossip. Depressingly, that all makes sense too.

After a few minutes he realizes that either he concedes right now that this is real, or he never will, because if he insists he needs more proof than this he’ll never find it. He takes a deep breath, and chooses the option that won’t drive him crazy.

So. So now the conclusion is that Tony Stark’s not just dead, he’s effectively a ghost. And he’s...haunting his loved ones? Not even by choice, but just because his soul keeps getting pulled back to them?

The only glaring problem with that theory is the old guy. Tony  _ knows  _ he doesn’t know anyone like him, or at least not well enough for his ghost self to want to haunt them. The only person he could possibly guess would be Yinsen, which completely doesn’t work on the grounds of ethnicity and the fact that he’s also already dead.

Jesus, he made cracks about being friends with a senior citizen because of Steve, but it’s not like those were  _ serious._ And speaking of that- where the hell is Steve? Sure, they weren’t on the best of terms before the Decimation and they were still somewhat repairing their relationship when he died, but he doesn’t think it was bad enough to exclude Steve from hauntings. He’s seen everyone else, he’s pretty sure- Pepper, Morgan, Peter, Rhodey, Bruce, Thor, Clint, Natasha, everyone.

He picks up the notebook again and starts flipping through it to see if he can figure this guy out. At the same time, he gets halfway through googling “Steve Rogers” right as someone opens the door and immediately stops dead.

Shit. Shouldn’t Tony have heard him coming? 

In his defense, maybe, ghost ears don’t physically exist and he’s still not exactly sure how he’s able to perceive sound at all.

The guy clearly can’t see him, but he definitely saw something typing on the keyboard when he walked in. Plus there’s a notebook floating in the air. Without thinking, Tony drops it.

The old guy stays  _ remarkably  _ calm, but his eyes narrow as the notebook hits the ground with a thud. Tony feels curiously like a kid who got caught doing something he shouldn’t, which is something he  _ honestly _ hasn’t felt in 30 years. “Is anyone there?” The guy says in a measured voice, looking around the room.

Tony opens his mouth for half a second before closing it. He really doesn’t know who this guy is. He was in the process of finding out, but-

- _ woah  _ the guy strides forward and what the fuck he’s old he shouldn’t be able to move that fast. On instinct Tony steps back and- huh.

The guy basically walks right through him. Looking down, Tony still  _ looks _ as solid as ever, but apparently this is what happens when he’s not actively concentrating. He swings his arm out randomly in a wide arc, not intending to try to touch or pick anything up, and it swipes right through the guy’s chest like he’s made of air.

Interesting.

The guy’s still looking around like not being able to feel something means nothing’s there, until he sees the name that Tony was typing into the search bar and stills. He starts clicking through all the articles that Tony opened, and Tony leans forward to read over his shoulder. He doesn’t totally need them, now that he’s determined that this is the real world, but he might as well search again for mentions of Steve.

Unfortunately, the guy doesn’t seem super interested in reading the articles himself, and after a few moments he steps away and starts to call someone. Tony walks with him with full intent to pry, but at that moment he finally loses his grip on the reality-which-is-now-confirmed-to-be-reality and he’s whisked away into another memory, without seeing who the guy’s calling.

He gets what feels like fifteen whole memories in a row with Steve after that, like his subconscious is trying to tell him something.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_ “Hey Sam, can you come over to my apartment right now?” _

_ “Uh, sure. Why?” _

_ “I just walked in on something invisible going through my notebook and using my computer. Once I walked in it dropped the notebook and I think left so I don’t know what it was.” _

_ “Damn, you just attract trouble no matter how old you are. You mean like a ghost or something?” _

_ “Maybe? I’m not sure why, but it opened up a bunch of articles about general news and the Avengers, and it googled my name specifically. Honestly, it sure looked like a ghost when I first walked in.” _

_ “I- huh. That was a joke but- Clint was just telling me about how Pepper said something strange happened with Morgan a bit ago. Like Morgan thought she saw a ghost too.” _

_ “What happened?” _

_ “Uh, I’ll tell you when I get there.” _


End file.
